The Method class represents a member method of a class. It also allows
dynamic invocation, via reflection. This works for both static and
instance methods. Invocation on Method objects knows how to do
widening conversions, but throws IllegalArgumentException if
a narrowing conversion would be necessary. You can query for information
on this Method regardless of location, but invocation access may be limited
by Java language access controls. If you can't do it in the compiler, you
can't normally do it here either.

Note: This class returns and accepts types as Classes, even
primitive types; there are Class types defined that represent each
different primitive type. They are java.lang.Boolean.TYPE,
java.lang.Byte.TYPE,, also available as boolean.class,
byte.class, etc. These are not to be confused with the
classes java.lang.Boolean, java.lang.Byte, etc., which are
real classes.

Also note that this is not a serializable class. It is entirely feasible
to make it serializable using the Externalizable interface, but this is
on Sun, not me.

getDefaultValue

If this method is an annotation method, returns the default
value for the method. If there is no default value, or if the
method is not a member of an annotation type, returns null.
Primitive types are wrapped.

getGenericReturnType

getModifiers

Gets the modifiers this method uses. Use the Modifier
class to interpret the values. A method can only have a subset of the
following modifiers: public, private, protected, abstract, static,
final, synchronized, native, and strictfp.

invoke

Invoke the method. Arguments are automatically unwrapped and widened,
and the result is automatically wrapped, if needed.

If the method is static, o will be ignored. Otherwise,
the method uses dynamic lookup as described in JLS 15.12.4.4. You cannot
mimic the behavior of nonvirtual lookup (as in super.foo()). This means
you will get a NullPointerException if o is
null, and an IllegalArgumentException if it is incompatible
with the declaring class of the method. If the method takes 0 arguments,
you may use null or a 0-length array for args.

Next, if this Method enforces access control, your runtime context is
evaluated, and you may have an IllegalAccessException if
you could not acces this method in similar compiled code. If the method
is static, and its class is uninitialized, you trigger class
initialization, which may end in a
ExceptionInInitializerError.

Finally, the method is invoked. If it completes normally, the return value
will be null for a void method, a wrapped object for a primitive return
method, or the actual return of an Object method. If it completes
abruptly, the exception is wrapped in an
InvocationTargetException.

Parameters:

o - the object to invoke the method on

args - the arguments to the method

Returns:

the return value of the method, wrapped in the appropriate
wrapper if it is primitive

IllegalArgumentException - if the number of arguments is incorrect;
if the arguments types are wrong even with a widening conversion;
or if o is not an instance of the class or interface
declaring this method

toGenericString

toString

Get a String representation of the Method. A Method's String
representation is "<modifiers> <returntype>
<methodname>(<paramtypes>) throws <exceptions>", where
everything after ')' is omitted if there are no exceptions. Example:
public static int run(java.lang.Runnable,int)

java.lang.reflect.Method - reflection of Java methods
Copyright (C) 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of GNU Classpath.
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it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
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